I've recently completed Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha's book about careers in the 21st Century, The Start-up of You. It's an interesting read - part practical guide to networking, part sage-like advice on the future of work and jobs and careers, and part LinkedIn user manual. That last bit can grate a bit at times, … Continue reading The Start-up of You – Review
Category: Themes
Never a day seems to go by without another article predicting either the death of email or it's inevitable dominance. The thing is, the technology isn't the issue; it's all in the way we use and abuse it. So following on from recent thoughts about stricter structures for how meetings might work, a colleague Rob … Continue reading Effective email?
I've just got back from a very pleasant weekend in the Bavarian city of Munich. It was interesting to see how some things are done very differently on the continent. Take train travel, and what we euphemistically refer to as "revenue protection". In the UK these days there are on the spot fines for travelling … Continue reading Assumed innocence
There have been two sets of buildings that seem to have been constants through most of my life: Watford FC's Vicarage Road stadium, and BBC Television Centre. The history of the latter enters a new era from tomorrow. TVC, as the abbreviation junkies at the BBC inevitably call it, was a place I first visited … Continue reading Separation anxiety
I hear a lot of talk about millennials. The generation after Gen-Y, who will be coming through into the world of work, social-networked up to their eyeballs. They will change the way in which we work, apparently. Actually, I'm getting a bit bored of this cult of youth. Maybe it's because I'm getting a … Continue reading Rise of the TechnoGranny
Just occasionally one spots something on social networks that makes you think "Uh oh. This is going to end in tears." Towards the end of the afternoon yesterday I had one of those moments; a sponsored tweet from UK supermarket Sainsbury's asking "Are you cooking with an unusual food tonight? We’d love you to … Continue reading Horsing around
I've spoken and written in the past about how the general expectations that we have as consumers of technology these days are going to place increasing pressure onto IT departments as people rise up against the controls and constraints of traditional "systems". I thought it worth exploring a bit from the other perspective - how does … Continue reading Consumption patterns
You can stick your Gartner hype circles in a pipe and smoke them; this is all you need to know: Something is invented Somebody else successfully brings it to market Some people buy one Some more people buy one My Dad buys one My Mum spends her time saying "why do you spend so … Continue reading The Ballantine Family tech adoption cycle
We've been doing a review in the team recently as the introduction of new services for collaborating (SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro and Yammer in particular) have necessitated as rethinking of what tools we use for what purposes. As a general rule I tend to shy away from projects that lead with a bit of technology searching … Continue reading Clock watching
Here's a contention: that in the history of technological innovation, most of it has come about because of direct or indirect government money: tax payers have funded most of the quantum leaps we've seen since agrarian times. The UK was the heartland of the Industrial Revolution. Whilst most of that, from cotton mills onwards, was … Continue reading Funding innovation
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